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Posted: 7/25/06
Which Member of Green Day is the Best?
What kind of question is that? you may ask. How can you just simply decide which one of the three Green Day Godheads is better than the others? Simple: put in a bit of effort! Which one is the best all-round human being? Which one is the most lickable? The one you couldn't live without? The one you'd LOVE to meet in a dark alley?
Oh, come on. It's not THAT tough to choose, is it? Just so you're head won't explode, here are some of the most tender, juicy pieces of each guy for you to mull over, pick apart, digest, and play with, possibly wearing them as crowns and boas until they rot away. You freak.
Ode to Billie Joe Armstrong
For a lot of fans out there, this is no contest. Billie Joe IS Green Day. He's the front man that does all the dancing around and most of the singing and talking. He's the one that the media descends upon with the greatest fury. So obviously he's had the greatest amount of exposure with which to impress all his tricks and treats on a drooling preteen audience.
But beyond all the flash - the wild stage performances, the slick outfits, the eyeliner, who is Billie Joe? What lies deep within his chewy, nougat-y core? Let's see if we can't build random facts about Billie into a plausible character, ideally tragic and heroic, dark and compelling.
Billie Joe grew up in the suburban wastelands of America. His mom supported her six children, of whom Billie Joe is the youngest, by waitressing at Rod's Hickory Pit.
In High School, Billie played a bit of football, but never got into it heavily because come on, sports are fun, but jock's suck. Instead, Billie got really into music and the punk scene. He sold the chron' so he could smoke it, just unloading joints and shit, which earned him the nickname "Two-Dollar Bill."
So finally he bails out of high school to get all serious about Green Day. The guys are touring and partying like mad, and of course they get to meet cool punks from all over the world. When Green Day starts to get famous, Billie is dating this hardcore punk chick, who gets PISSED and ditches him when Green Day signs with a major label.
So even though Green Day's exploding beyond what any of the guys thought possible, Billie's depressed. "It was fucking me up," he says about that period. "A lot of the time I was thinking about suicide, how it's so easy to kill yourself, but so hard to stay alive."
But of course, as they tend to, times improved. At a 1990 Green Day show in Minneapolis, Billie Joe met Adrienne Nesser, a girl that he had admired in the crowd during the show. Although Adrienne was a few years older than him, sparks flew, and in the years to follow, Billie Joe made sure that several Green Day tours passed through Minneapolis so that he could hook it up.
Adrienne was with another guy for a while, because she and Billie figured the long distance thing could never work, but she finally rejected him and accepted Billie's pleas for her to join him out west. They were married in 1994 in a ceremony that took five minutes. The next day, Adrienne found out she was pregnant. Hmm, coincidence or shotgun wedding? Or is that just going too far?
Unlike those of his band mates and against all odds, Billie Joe's marriage has stayed strong over the years. He and Adrienne have two boys named Joseph Marciano and Jakob Danger.
Times were tough during the American Idiot era, and the couple fought like mad. "I think it challenged us to a new level," Adrienne told VH1. "It pushed us pretty far. The farthest I ever want to go." But now that the craziness is over, the two are glued to the hip once again, and Billie's focusing on helping Addie run Adeline Street Gear.
So what do you get when you look at the picture of Billie Joe Armstrong? Nothing short of a walking contradiction.
He has punk values, but he's a huge star.
He speaks openly about being bisexual, while staying committed to a long-term traditional relationship.
He's a teen heartthrob, but he doesn't like to act the role: "They have bad taste. I am not a good-looking guy," he says. "I don't really know what to think about young girls thinking about old men like that."
He seems super confident and extroverted, and yet Tre says that he cannot handle criticism, and Billie himself has admitted to not being able to deal with Tre's teasing. He's also prone to panic attacks.
What does all this mean? It means that if you like complicated, passionate people with big mouths but tender egos, and strong nesting instincts (Billie's body is covered with tattoos representing Adrienne, Joey, Jakob, and Green Day), then you need look no further to find your rock superstar soulmate.
Mike Dirnt, Dirnt, Dirnt, Dirnt, Dirnt
Of course, not everybody falls for the big star. Some of us remain, as ever, unimpressed by an overabundance of spotlight addiction. That's why we have Mike Dirnt.
Mike is one of those "forged in fire" types. His mother was a heroin addict that gave him up for adoption when he was a tiny baby. He was adopted by a couple that divorced when he was seven. He lived with his mom until she finally bailed out and left him with her current husband, a guy that seemed harsh to Mike at first, but turned out to be a good role model in the end:
"When I hit high school, my mom moved away from us, and me and my stepdad got real close. He instilled a lot in me. The one thing my family did give me is blue-collar morals."
And it didn't take long for Mike to start living the blue-collar dream. By the time he was 15, he was already living on his own, out of a truck and at friends' places. He learned fast to take care of himself - working as a cook and paying rent, while he fought his way through school.
His years in unstable situations had already made him into the person he would become - rock-solid, hardworking, but ultimately laid back. "It's no use analyzing your life the whole time," Mike says. "Those analyses won't help you when you're dead." So Mike just puts his head down and moves forward. When the other Green Day guys ditched high school, he went on to college.
Basically, Mike does his own thing, and he doesn't give a fuck what anybody else thinks. Like when it comes to Green Day, he insists that "we write music for ourselves and if other people like it, that's great." If they don't, they should probably go fuck themselves.
Mike is not only laid-back when it comes to worrying about what people think, he's also very chilled out physically. Even though he's the biggest, toughest looking guy in the band, he's far from being the Green Day member that pulls the craziest antics.
Although his stage performances are high-energy, Mike draws the line at getting naked onstage, unlike Tre and Billie. This is a pity, since he is said to be the most well-endowed of three.
But that's just not Mike's style. He is the zen-master of chilling out and not giving a fuck. He gets rowdy and crazy, but only on his own terms. Mike has probably long since figured out that when he leaves things up to other people, the scene goes bad fast.
Like when he almost didn't finish school because his mom wouldn't sign an attendance form. Or when his old girlfriend broke both his arms in a pillow fight. Or when he got his teeth knocked out at Woodstock because a security guard mistook him for a rowdy fan.
Some might call him accident-prone, but all the Dirnt-lovers out there know that he's really a guy that just does his best work when he's in control and doing his own thing, i.e. playing bass.
Mike's love life has been a series of ups and downs. He's had two wives and two divorces, which is no surprise since he grew up in a world where people weren't to be depended on, and relationships did not last forever.
On the other hand, Mike is devoted to his daughter Estelle (Stella) Desiree, and he has the most loyal fanbase out of all the guys in the band. He also co-owns a restaurant - Rudy's Can't Fail Café, so he does know how to commit, just not when it comes to romance.
What does all this mean? It means that if you like people that are tough, steady, and have mastered the ancient art of fuck-you-whatever, then you're a Mike Dirnt kind of person. But tread carefully, loving Dirnt is forever. He might leave you, but you'll never leave him.
Tell me a Tre Cool Story. Please!
Tre is a unique blend of herbs and spices, beloved by the most discerning of Green Day fans, which of course means that fans who like their rock stars rowdy, crazy, hilarious, and sex-obsessed are particularly fond of Mr. Cool.
Of course, Tre was born a rebel. His dad was a Vietnam Helicopter Pilot that moved his family to Germany, and then to the Mendocino mountains of North Cali in order to escape the anti-war backlash that was sweeping the nation in the 1970s.
So Tre grew up in the mountain enclave of Willits with nothing to do and no one for neighbors but a bunch of punks. It follows that early on Tre learned a) How to amuse himself, and b) how to not play by his own (non-existent) set of rules and no one else's.
Tre started drumming with the punk band The Lookouts when he was only 12. That's where he got the name Tre Cool. Ever since the arrival of that munificent moniker, Tre has been working hard to prove the old adage that the way to be cool is just to be yourself. No matter how wacky, bizarre, and scandalous that self may be.
A series of vignettes should serve to illustrate:
In high school, Tre was performing on a unicycle (ask not why). He fell off (surprise, surprise), fell HARD, and destroyed on of his testicles in the process. Now he is a single-T sort of guy, which in no way affects the awesome number of times that he is able to wank off in a day.
Tre did a brief stint at Clown College before Green Day got successful.
Tre once beat a shark to death with a baseball bat. And people say that Mike's the one who plays the bat?
Tre is the official Green Day drug tester. When fans throw free shit on stage, Tre tries it to make sure it's not poison before they all dig in.
Tre once milked a dog to get milk for his coffee. The dog was apparently nursing and had plenty to spare, but the act shocked Tre's hosts, and freaked everybody out, including the dog.
Tre is psychic! He has seen crazy ghosts and spirits at haunted hotels and venues where the band has played. At the Convention Hall Hotel in Ashbury Park, Tre once saw a bunch of horribly injured people that no one else saw, and later found out the hotel was an old military hospital from WWII. Woah.
After he divorced his second wife, Claudia, Tre continued to live with her so that they could raise their son Frankito in a stable environment. He's also the godfather of Billie Joe's kids. Okay, okay, those aren't funny stories, but they do show an interesting side of Tre we don't always see.
And therein lies the truth about Tre. As wacky and goofy as he may be, there's a lot more to the guy than just gross bodily functions and excretions.
He's also super-smart. He's very politically aware, and has strong, intelligent anti-war opinions: "Maybe I'm just being ignorant and shortsighted, you know, it's true I'm not running the government, I'm not running the United States. I just don't think that killing people is a good way to remedy people dying. Martin Luther King Jr., said that you can murder a murderer but you can never murder murder itself."
He's also super talented and innovative. Tre's fast, aggressive drum styles have often been cited as a major influencing force for young punk drummers just coming up in the scene. He's also written a few of the more hilarious Green Day songs, such as "Dominated Love Slave," "All By Myself," and "DUI."
What does this all mean? It means that if you like people who know how to laugh, AND how to make other people laugh, but who also think deep and take shit seriously when it's important, then you're a Tre freak. And that's fine. No one does what he does better than Tre. Despite all the drugs and masturbation and dog milking, he's a guy that really keeps his shit together, and that's the kind of things that makes or breaks the success of a band like Green Day.
So Who Do You Love?
You can go on and on about how loving Green Day is not about playing favorites, but deep down in your secret little soul, you know you love one of them best. So which one is it?
The passionate, abrasive, fiercely loyal lead man? The bass-playing zen-master of not giving a fuck? Or the goofy, thoughtful, pure energy drummer? There, you don't even have to say their names. Just think it. You know you're doing it, and it's okay. Rock stars don't make you pay twenty bones for an album just so you can listen to it, you're also paying to control their lives, and judge them for everything they do.
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